Value Plastics breaks ground on new north-Loveland facility

Fort Collins injection-molding company will move 90-plus jobs here next year

By Craig Young Reporter-Herald Staff Writer

Posted:
06/02/2014 05:28:30 PM MDT

Value Plastics employes Will Stone, left, and Andrew Grabou remove a sign used during the company's groundbreaking ceremony Monday morning at its site in north Loveland as an earth mover works in the background. The Fort Collins-based injection-molding company is building a 115,000-square-foot production facility on West 71st Street. (Craig Young / Loveland Reporter-Herald)

LOVELAND -- In a ceremony that acknowledged the incentives that helped bring them to Loveland, representatives of injection-molding company Value Plastics broke ground Monday morning on a 115,000-square-foot facility.

The maker of fittings and valves for medical plastic tubing is expected to spend $28 million on the state-of-the-art production plant in north Loveland and its equipment and will move from Fort Collins in the first half of 2015, officials said.

Jeff Pembroke, group vice president of Nordson, the Ohio-based company that bought Value Plastics almost three years ago, thanked Larimer County, Loveland and Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp. officials for their help.

He said companies dealing with local governments sometimes can get bogged down in bureaucracy, but with Loveland, "it never felt that way."

Last fall, the Loveland City Council approved about $1 million in economic incentives, including infrastructure improvements, waivers of fees and a rebate of business personal property taxes for five years. The county also will rebate business personal property taxes.

As Value Plastics outgrew its leased facility in Fort Collins, company officials decided to look for a site in the area so they could retain their 90-plus skilled employees, Pembroke said.

"Those are hard to find," he said of the production workers, engineers, marketing professionals, managers and support people.

Documents that city economic development officials presented to the City Council last year said Value Plastics could add about 60 employees over the next several years. Average salary at the company is about $72,000, according to the city.

John Gibson, director of operations, was cautious about the employment projections, explaining Monday that the company is likely to rely on technology to keep down the need to hire large numbers of people.

The new plant will be about three times the size of Value Plastics' current space in Fort Collins and will incorporate energy-saving design elements, Gibson said.

Because the company makes components for medical uses, it has to maintain high manufacturing standards, he said.

"You're going to see one of the biggest clean rooms ever inside this building," Gibson said.

Nordson a company with $1.5 billion in annual sales and offices in 30 countries, is known for its philanthropy, Pembroke said.

The 116-acre site at the west end of 71st Street borders a grain field in the county's Long View Farm Open Space at Loveland's northern boundary.